Projects

Sunday, 30 October 2011

This is a poem I wrote one night while on tour in Chicago. I was trying to figure out if I was feeling lonely or if I was feeling sorry for myself. After a conversation about this I realised how reluctant I was to allow myself to feel lonely so I just let it be and wrote this.

(Excuse the sound of the waitress walking around the room collecting empty glasses off the tables)

Do not ask me if I'm lonely,

I will not know how to answer.

Mum says I came out her womb,
screaming like I was wounded
until I was put in her arms.

Do not ask me if I'm lonely.

Writers talk about owning their own loneliness,
but I think its just something they say to the walls.

I get mad at time, at times
because it can't give me any more of my childhood.

At times,
all I can taste are the spaces
sore between my broken teeth,

at times,
I see old lovers under falling snow
in yellow summer dresses,
looking like a warm place to escape to.

Grandma saysits amazing what we keep in our brains,some we want, some we don't want.This is the darkest place inside me,
I walk in, turn on the night and watch what disappears,
do not ask me if I'm lonely.

I do not know if loneliness is an injury.

I was afraid to learn this poem by heart
because of what it might do to my heart.

I sit with my loneliness and we both agree,
we like each others company,
but only when we know what to do,
with each other.

Saturday, 29 October 2011

This is Jacob Sam La Rose's first full collection believe it or not but it's worth the wait as its published by the leading publisher of poetry, 'Blood Axe'. Jacob is a key figure in the UK poetry world as a performer and writer. I caught up with him for a chat about his thoughts on Slam Poetry and why there is a divide between poetry on the page and poetry on the stage.

This is the forth collection of poetry from US poet Derrick Brown. Derrick Brown is an ex-weatherman, failed magician and paratrooper turned poet. He runs his own publishing house (Write Bloody) and is a key figure in bringing some of the biggest names in performance poetry (such as Buddy Wakefield, Anis Mojgani, Andrea Gibson etc) to the page. I caught up with him in Boardway Market, Hackney for a Boar Burger and a chat about travelling, performing and getting older.

Friday, 14 October 2011

There is a particular road that keeps showing up in my dreams. It’s on the side of a hill and it swirls around it. The road is paved with cream colour stones. A row of red bricked houses runs along both sides of the road but I’ve never seen any people. I always pass the road on a double-decker bus. I sit on the left hand side on the top deck and peer out the window onto it.

As soon as I see this road I know I’m dreaming.

Most of my dreams involve some form of transportation. I’ve steered a huge wooden ship through a sleepy ocean, I’ve been a passenger on a plane (in-aisle-eight) and I’ve gone on road trips across deserts with talking coffee cups. But usually I’m either on a train or waiting for one.

I wonder why there are so many transportation services in my dreams when I have the ability to teleport.

Last night I dreamt I was on a platform of an old fashioned train station. The railway tracks were made of rusted steel and thick brown wood which ran across a sea of black pebbles.

I sat on the gravel floor of the platform next to an old woman in a baggy red coat. We were the only people around. The wrinkles in her face were thick like lightning bolts stuck in the sky. We started talking but every time I asked for either her name or what she does for a living her voice and the weather would distort.

This is what she said.

Should’da got a taxi. My father drove a taxi. He used to grow peppermint in the front seat and apricots in the back. He loved nature but hated cyclists. The sky kept falling into his hair. He was full of electricity and if it came with a bill my mother was paying it. The world could have turned off and my mother would have stayed on. She didn’t die, she just stopped running. She walked out of her body for a cigarette and didn’t come back. At the funeral my father said we were sharing a house with too much fire. I only wore red from then on; I was trying to show my father what it felt like to look like him. That’s why I didn’t get a taxi I guess, I might have had to sit in the back seat with apricots.

Sunday, 9 October 2011

Last night I performed a set of poems at the Parole Parlour in Worcester. I was specially happy about my new poems going down well. That night I slept at the local Travelodge.

My train back to London was at noon the next day. I checked out of my hotel at ten and went for a walk around town. The sky was red that morning. A red sky is meant to be a sign of rain but the sun stayed out.

Walking past a medieval Cathedral and then a M&S supermarket, I noted the queue for the self service check out and then the free wifi sign outside the coffee shop next door. I wondered how I’d explain this to someone living seven hundred years ago. I pictured myself standing there holding an i-phone and showing it to a man in a black gown and an iron mask.

Outside London people talk to you in the street; this takes some getting used to. I was sitting on a bench and a woman with a face like a rotten carrot came up and sat beside me. Her arm was in a sling and she reeked of alcohol. The conversation went like this.

Her - Hello, you have great teeth.

Me - Oh’, thanks, was I smiling? I didn’t notice.

Her - What do you do?

I thought about this for a moment before answering the question.

Me - I’m a poet.

Her - A poet? How’d ya do that then?

Me - I write poems and travel places to perform them.

She looks at me blankly.

Me - Even I think it’s weird.

Her- Oh’. I never met a living poet before. Do all poets have teeth like that?

Me - I don’t know... some of them wear capes though.

She doesn’t laugh.

Her- How can I find out more about your poetry?

Me - The Internet... look up Raymond Antrobus.

Her – Don’t know nothing about the internet.

Me – I rarely meet a person who knows nothing about the internet. Well, unless I tell you a poem now you may never get to know.

I opened my notebook and read a poem I’m currently working on.

Afterwards she smiles and I notice she has about five teeth in her mouth. They look like yellow dices.

Her – I like the bit about not being able to stand on top of a mountain without feeling like a cloud is shitting on ya. I’m a bit like that. If I could sing or write poems I’d enjoy my own company a bit more.

A man comes over with a face like a rotten potato. He reeked of alcohol.

Man – Careful mate, she fancies you.

Woman – oh’ shut up!

I check my watch.

Me – Alright, I’ve got to catch my train now.

I got to the station half an hour early and start writing this into my journal.Disclaimer: All people in Worcester DO NOT look like rotten vegetables.

Friday, 7 October 2011

Been gigging quite a bit with Adam recently, every time I hear his name I'm heard shouting "I LOVE THAT GUY!" and this mini interview hopefully shows why.

What does your writing desk look like?

I don't really use a desk for writing. I write anywhere with a seat that serves tea. And sometimes even where they don't serve tea. Like on buses. I edit my stuff at a desk. It's got piles of envelopes and books on it, a map of paris and three ash and fag encrusted ashtrays adapted from gu pudding pots. And some dirty cups.

What is on your to do list?

Send Sam promo stuff. Ticked.

Send Ray interview and photo response. Soon to have a big tick next to it.

Practice new stuff.

Book trains.

Then I have an infinite mental to do list that includes things like save money, be a better person, read the classics, eat vegetables, quit job, get gigs, watch films, get cleverer etc etc

I feel like my actual to do list is super boring. I'm doing other things today, they're just not on the list. OK?

What's more important, talking or listening?

Listening I reckon. If you don't listen, very little you say will be worth hearing. There's an ancient chinese soundbite in there. Daniel San, one must first listen, only then will he be worth listening to.

Having said that, I am a chatterbox.

What makes a better story pictures or words?

Well I'm gonna have to say words because I'm biased. However, I am constantly envious of the instancy of visual communication. Pictures are more primal, requiring an effort to disengage as opposed to words which demand an effort to engage with. However words give you control. This answer could get really long. I'll curtail it there.

Saturday, 1 October 2011

What happened? Kids with guns probably. That’s what keeps happening anyway. Some estates round here
hire guns. It’s organised. Young lads go into the estates and can hire a gun
without bullets for twenty quid. Scare other kids off. It’s in levels. Next level
up is buying a gun with bullets but if the gun is used they have to bring it
back within twenty four hours to give time to circulate the gun to an estate in another
part of the country. It’s hired out again somewhere else while its just being
reported here. Clever eh? Meanwhile, we're onto another
group of kids. Each of them is named after a type of brick. They get
together and form a wall. While we’ve got our heads banging against other
things these kids are making up the streets. Muggings are up so there’s a
lot of goods’ being sold through a hole. A tight network of bike
thieves operate here too. They peddle more than a lot of the drug
dealers. Ah well...

Raymond Antrobus Bio

Raymond Antrobus is a poet and former lead educator on the Spoken Word Education MA Programme at Goldsmiths University. Currently he is a one of the London Laureates. Born and bred in Hackney, he is also co-curator of popular London poetry events Chill Pill (Soho Theatre and The Albany) and Keats House Poets Forum. Raymond’s work has appeared on BBC Radio 4, The Big Issue, The Guardian and at TedxEastEnd. As well as respected literary journals such as The Rialto, Magma, Oxford University Diaspora's Programme and Alaska University Press. Sky Arts and Ideas Tap listed Raymond in the top 20 promising young artists in the UK. His second collection - Shapes & Disfigurements Of Raymond Antrobus - is published by Burning Eye Books.
“His monologues are stunning studies of voice and substance, and his lyric poems are graceful and finely crafted” - Kwame Dawes
“Raymond uses nostalgia for a place and a time, but resists sentimentality completely. He makes the reader/listener experience the moment with all the senses and very skilfully sets that up against a harsher reality” – Imtiaz Dharker